The magazine of the Melbourne PC User Group
Making Work Easier In Word
Brett Lockwood

Brett Lockwood explains how Word's build-in styles automatically format our documents and tells us how to manipulate those styles.
 
Frequently I hear people saying that they plan to use styles in a particular document, but not in another. In other words they are planning occasional use of styles to tag document text. However, in Word you are always working with styles, whether you choose to or not.

The Normal Style

When you create a document and begin keying in text, Word automatically uses the Normal style as its "base" style for formatting text. 		    The procedures in this article have been checked with versions of Word up to and including Word 2000 (PC) and Word 2001 (Mac). There may be minor differences depending on the status of your Microsoft Office Service Packs.

In Word 97 (PC) and 98 (Mac) the Normal style font is usually 10-point Times New Roman, and in Word 2000 (PC) and 2001 (Mac) it's usually 12-point Times New Roman.
 

In addition to that, any existing document you obtain from elsewhere will also have the Normal style as its base style, unless the author chose to use another.

You can verify this automatic use of the Normal style by looking at the Style Preview box for a new document. The box is located on the Formatting toolbar, and displays the style tag of the text containing the cursor, as in Figure 1.



Figure 1. Entering text into a new document
(Word 2000). The text is automatically tagged
with this style.

Other Standard Document Elements

If you insert a footnote into your document (using Insert|Footnote), Word automatically uses the Footnote Reference style to tag (format) the superscript numeral denoting the footnote. In addition, the Footnote Text style is automatically used to tag the footnote text you key in. If you insert an endnote, the same process occurs (but the Endnote Reference and Endnote Text styles are used).

The same applies to comments added using Insert|Comment. The Comment Reference style is used to tag the alphanumeric comment reference mark that identifies the location of the comment in the text, and the Comment Text style is used to tag your comment text. If you use headers and footers, the Header style and Footer style are used. If you click the Insert Page Number button on the Header and Footer toolbar, the Page Number style is used to tag the page number.

If you are used to working with tables of contents (created via Insert|Index and Tables), you will probably know that the heading levels are automatically tagged with the TOC1, TOC2, TOC3 styles etc. If you create a table of figures (using the same menu sequence), the table content is tagged with the Table of Figures style.
 

You can always identify the name of the style being used by selecting some of the text relating to that element and looking at the Style Preview box. Figure 2 shows a footnote has been inserted into text, and the superscript numeral marking the footnote has been selected. The Style Preview box displays the style name (Footnote Reference).

This type of automatic style use makes a lot of sense. Text must be constructed from attributes of one type or another, even if these attributes are only a font name and a point size. Such styling ensures consistency of document formatting.



Figure 2. Selecting the superscript numeral
for a footnote displays the style name in
the Style Preview box.

The bottom line of this process is that you cannot have any text at all in a Word document that is not tagged with a style.

Standard Document Elements use Built-in Styles
 

All the style names mentioned above are built-in styles. There are about 95 built-in styles in Word 97/98 and about 105 in Word 2000/2001 (the extra styles in the later versions relate to Internet functions). If you open a new (empty) document, use Format|Style to open the Style dialog box, and examine the contents of the "All styles" list you are looking at a pristine listing of all the built-in styles available for use in that document.

Figure 3 shows the style dialog box.The Footnote Reference style is selected and the description for this style appears in the lower right side of the box.

The most interesting component of Figure 3 is the Modify button. You can use this to change the style descriptions for some of these built-in styles to make work a little easier by causing items such as footnote reference marks to stand out better on the screen.



Figure 3. The Style dialog box.

Modifying Built-In Styles

Footnote reference marks are good for illustrating the usefulness of modifying built-in styles because many people find these marks difficult to read, not only on-screen, but also on printed copy. In the following example, the Footnote Reference style is modified to make the superscript numeral larger, bold, and set in a colour.

To modify the Footnote Reference style:

  1. Open a document or create a new document using File|New.
  2. Use Format|Style to open the Style dialog box.
  3. Ensure that the All styles list is selected under List: at the lower left-hand side of the box.
  4. Click on the Footnote Reference style name in the style listing to select it.
  5. Look at the style description in the Description area of the Style box. This is your default description for the style. Take a note of what this is, if you want to. (Don't be thrown by the term "Default Paragraph Font".)
  6. Click the Modify button to open the Modify Style dialog box.
  7. Click the Format button and choose "Font" from the drop-down menu. This opens the Font dialog box.
  8. Apply the desired font formats to this style:
    9. a) in the Font style: list, select "bold"
    b) in the Size: list, select, a font size, for example, "16"
    c) click the Color: drop-down list and select "Pink" ("Magenta" in Word 6).
  9. Click OK to close the Font box and return to the Modify Style box.
  10. Examine your changed style description. If you applied the suggested attributes, your description will now read "Default Paragraph Font + Font: 16 pt, Bold, Superscript, Pink".
  11. Choose the "Add to template" option if you want to. This is an important decision, and is explained below. If you are not sure what this option does, don't use it. Click OK to close this box.
  12. Click Close (not Apply) to close the Style dialog box.
Insert a footnote to see the result of modifying this style. If any footnotes already exist in the document, their reference marks will have changed to reflect the new style description.

Figure 4 shows a comparison between a footnote inserted using an unmodified Footnote Reference style (document 3, behind) and a footnote inserted using the modifications suggested above (document 4, in front). Do you think this process makes the identification of footnotes easier?

The Add To Template Option
 



Figure 4. The Footnote Reference style
unmodified (top), and modified (bottom).
If you select the "Add to template" option when modifying a style (step 11 above), the modified style will be stored in both the active document and the template being used by the document (usually the Normal template). If you leave the "Add to template" option unchecked, the modified style will be stored only in the active document.

So, if you want your modified style to be available in all your new documents, use this option. Either way, existing documents other than the active document will not be affected.

A Multicolour Display

Figure 5 shows some text containing three commonly used document elements: comments, footnotes, and endnotes. All three styles have the font made a larger point size and bold. The Comment Reference style has been made red, the Footnote Reference style has been made pink, and the Endnote Reference style has been made blue. With the notes, an advantage gained by using colour is that if you wish, you can use Arabic numerals (1, 2, 3 etc.) for both footnotes and endnotes (endnotes have a default setting of Roman numerals - i, ii, iii etc.).
 



Figure 5. Commonly used document elements with styles modified.

Issues With Printing

Are there problems with printing documents if you use modified style descriptions that incorporate colour?

If a colour stands out well on-screen, it should print as a dark shade of grey on a monochrome printer. In my own work, I use the colours of blue, red, green, and pink. The advantages of using these colours as a set are that they all print as readable shades of grey, they contrast well against the standard white Word background, and with each other.

If you use colours as part of modified style descriptions, and you want a black print but you don't want to modify the style descriptions again just to get this, here are two methods you can use:

  1. Save your document, then use
     Edit|Select All to select all the document text, then choose Automatic on the Font Colour button on the Standard toolbar (or use Format|Font, and choose Auto from the Color: drop-down list in the Font dialog box). This will set all of your document text as black. Note: You will have to select header and footer text, comment text and footnote and endnote text separately if colours exist in these elements. The Edit|Select All command does not select these.
  2. You can choose the "print all text as black" option in your printer settings (accessed through the Print dialog box). Many printers now have this option.
More Information On-Screen

Some built-in styles can be modified to increase the amount of information presented to you on-screen, as opposed to simply making their document element marks more visible or comprehensible.

The best example I can think of is Document Map (activated using View|Document Map). Figures 6a and 6b show Document Map turned on for the same document. Figure 6a uses the default style description for the map entries, which is the point size of the Normal style, but set in the Tahoma typeface. Figure 6b shows Document Map after modification of the Document Map style to make it two points smaller and bold. The number of map entries on the screen is increased by about one-quarter (but they are still quite legible), which makes the use of this document navigation technique considerably easier (Document Map was not available prior to Word 97).
 



Figure 6a. Document Map, using the default settings
for the Document Map style.



Figure 6b. Document Map, with the Document Map style
modified to increase the number of map entries displayed.

Restoring Default Settings

If you modify styles, you're not stuck with these modifications. Also, you do not have to modify a style description before you begin using the element associated with that style. For example, you don't have to modify the Footnote Reference style before you begin adding footnotes. Styles operate dynamically. This means that if you alter the style description for a style that has already been applied in a document, all instances of tagged text immediately change to reflect the changed description. If styles did not work in this way, all consistency in formatting in a document would be lost. This consistency aspect is one major reason why we have styles.

So, if you have modified the Footnote Reference style and have chosen to store the style in the active document only, you can restore the style to its default settings by opening the document and repeating the sequence of steps 1 to 12 covered earlier, but, in step 8, you remove the style formats you previously applied. In step 11, you would leave the "Add to template" option unchecked.

On the other hand, if you had selected the "Add to template" option you can restore the Template to its default settings by repeating steps 1 to 12, and select the "Add to template" option again.

Feedback on this article is welcome.

About The Author
Brett Lockwood, brett@melbpc.org.au has been a freelance editor since 1981, and has worked with computers since 1976. Brett is training officer for the Society of Editors (Victoria) and teaches on-screen text editing (using MS Word).

Reprinted from the July 2003 issue of PC Update, the magazine of Melbourne PC User Group, Australia

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